OK, I've uploaded AI-NNFlex-0.11 to CPAN, with support for datasets a little bit like the Xerion approach. It makes the UI quite a bit friendlier - if you look at ./examples/xor_with_datasets.pl you'll see what I mean. PNG support has been put into ::draw and the lesioning method has been implemented. You can now damage the network probabilistically on a network-wide, layer or node basis.

I've cleaned up some of the nastiest perldoc sections aswell.

Quick question - I haven't done any work on the XS issue. I've never encountered XS before - does it have any prerequisites? Like a C compiler?

XS is like another mini language. First you need a C compiler, actually you need the same compiler used to compile your Perl. So, on Linux is easy since is always with GCC, but on Win32 you will need Microsoft Visual C++ 6+ (not free) if you got Perl from Active State, or MingW, that is GCC for Win32.

If you already know C, I think that the best way to you make XS functions with Perl is getting as examaple the sub{C} methods that you can find in the sources of AI::NNEasy. Because this functions have a Perl and a C version, so you can compare them and understand better what the C macros does. Also the Class::HPLOO syntax is easy like sugar, since you only need to write the function, all the rest Class::HPLOO will write for you, converting to Inline::C, than Inline will convert to XS, and from XS is with Perl. So, the code below is 100% complete, you just need to have a C compiler well installed:

Now you just need to run the code above, and the rest is automatically.

Other thing, your module is inside AI::NNEasy starting from the class AI::NNEasy::NN. So, if you move this class (and the sub classes sinde AI::NNEasy::NN::*) to your project you will have your modules with the resources that I have added to it. I let it separated to be more easy to you to get back the work that I did, so be free to use it. ;-P

It'll take a bit of time to explore this. I'm not sure I want to use HPLoo, since I intended NNFlex to be usable as a fairly simple teaching framework. The XS & HPLoo code is quite a bit more complex than the pure perl!

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other